Friedrich Georg Jünger - THE IMMATURITY OF TECHNOLOGICAL PERFECTION

"What do we mean by saying that technology achieves perfection? What does the statement imply? Nothing else than that the thinking which produces and expands technology comes to an end, that it reaches those limits which are set by its own methods. It means that a high degree of mechanical skill has been achieved, as can be observed in production methods, tools, and products.

When we study an engine, such as the diesel engine, from the first model built according to the inventor's calculations, to the latest model as it leaves the factory brand new, we observe the step-by-step advance of technical thought, testing itself, redesigning, improving, overcoming resistances. Such resistances, to the technician, are obstacles which must be and are being smoothed out by mechanical laws.

However, these "bugs" in any new design point at still another element.These resisting elements arise wherever forcible methods are applied, and they increase in the degree in which these methods become general. It is a mistake to think that the resistance is dissolved by its mechanical solution. Actually it remains; no matter how subdued, it is still there watching in ambush forever ready to burst into destruction. That is why in countries with highly developed technology we find the same state of nervous tension and uneasiness which marks empires having a large and malcontent slave population. On the surface the slaves may appear submissive enough, but one senses that their thoughts and dreams are centered on revolt, insurrection, and havoc. But in such countries we shall not find that patriarchal relationship that was still evident in the slave states of the South. Within the modern, technological order, there is neither the kind master nor the devoted slave. All this is gone, as neatly as bark stripped from a tree; patriarchal relations are replaced by mechanical relations; human relations are turned into power relations pure and simple, as are the laws of force and counterforce in physics. Apparently we cannot escape these power relationships, this law which governs our age.

Significantly, however, the human race never has and never can resign itself to be governed by mere power relationships. Its rank is higher and its destiny transcends by far the realm of mechanics because man is more than a machine. Human resistance against the dehumanizing forces, to be sure, often errs in its ways. For the most part, it never goes beyond the kind of revolt which is easily subdued, the revolt of the masses which unfailingly finds its master. With the revolt of the masses we shall not deal in this context, because the "exploitation of the exploiters" originates from the same ruthless will for exploitation which characterizes all technology. The far-reaching devastation wreaked by technology, the gaping wounds, the festering sores it produces in the body of the earth – they have their exact counterpart in the havoc which the revolt of the masses works.

In the realm of modern technology equilibrium exists no more, neither between man's work and his leisure, nor between man and nature. What today we term "love of nature" is mostly the emotional sentiment, the pity one feels for something that has been wounded, bled white, and needs protection. Modern civilization pities nature and, in a measure, patches up the wounds that it has previously inflicted. Unspoiled nature is haloed, is fenced in, and studded with verboten signs because a man may no longer be trusted with it, because he would only act like a vandal ruining and killing all things. These measures to protect nature are somehow offensive to our human vanity, but they are also ironically comic, considering that nature is by no means a passive victim of our exploitation. For, as we have seen before, nature answers the conquest of technology by a counter-invasion of its own; as we destroy it, it destroys us with the elementary forces we think we have captured.

To think in terms of causes, effects, and purposes means to think one-sidedly. To see things in their whole context cannot be learned, no more than one can learn rhythm or the periodicity from which all rhythm stems. Correlations and contexts are noticed only by those minds which think in universal and reverent terms, minds which therefore reject all pillage and exploitation.

Is there a counterpart in life to that ripping intrusion of machinery which always results in the deformation of nature? It can best be seen where machinery tears itself apart, where it is ripped open, where, in destruction, it loses its mechanical form, just as man who is tied to it is torn apart with utter disregard of his organic form and structure, which is to say, mechanically. He is not even cut up like an animal that is taken to the butcher, nor neatly carved and disjointed like a chicken: he is blown to pieces, crushed, torn to shreds.

This aspect, to which we must not shut our eyes, teaches us that technology may reach perfection, but never maturity. To ascribe maturity to a mechanism means using a metaphor which is quite out of place. Mechanisms may give the impression of the highest streamlined perfection, but this must not be confused with maturity. Maturity is never forced, nor can it be enforced. If we were to imagine a world based wholly on willpower and the energetic efforts of that will, it would be a world without maturity and forever devoid of maturity, a world of immature things which, nevertheless, might seem to be quite perfect.

That is the kind of world towards which technology is marching. That also is why, wherever we look today, we find will power in action, sectors of new developments, spearheads of progress – but hardly ever will we find anything mature, for maturity lies outside the realm of the machine. The concept of perfection used in this context expresses only that final state of completion that can be measured by those means which here combine to be the end. The concept is useful here because it is completely rational, and thereby it fits the conditions we have described."

Chapter XXVII from The Failure of Technology